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Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools

(theorthagonist.substack.com)
593 points ZeroTalent | 2 comments | 09 May 25 20:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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adamgordonbell ◴[10 May 25 01:47 UTC] No.43942617[source]▶
Spicy take: read the narrative non-fiction business books. They are written for entertainment and sit in the business section but you can learn things.

barbarians at the gate

when genius failed

bad blood

billion dollar whale

chaos monkey

liars poker

shoe dog

american kingping

broken code

soul of a new machine

and so on. There is nothing wrong with entertainment and since these are usually written by journalists or professional writers, the writing is often better.

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1. 0xDEAFBEAD ◴[10 May 25 09:20 UTC] No.43944305[source]▶
I picked up Barbarians at the Gate the other year, but put it down when I realized all it was doing was making me fantasize about all the useless toys I could buy myself if I was really rich. A good book to read if you want to dream about being an avaricious plutocrat.

Personally I'd like to see more rich people follow the Bill Gates model of giving almost all of it away.

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2. SonOfLilit ◴[10 May 25 13:24 UTC] No.43945430[source]▶
Interesting, I can't recall any specific expensive toy except that the RKR guy's wife liked expensive interior design, and my main takeaway from it was "accountants can make unimaginable amounts of money, both by creating value and destroying it, pay attention to the accounting perspective".